Baltimore eye in the sky

Baltimore Police Respond To Report Of Secret Aerial Surveillance Program

The program is “not an unmanned drone or a secret surveillance program,” Baltimore Police Department spokesman T.J. Smith began the Wednesday press conference by saying.

“This is a 21st century investigative tool used to assist investigators in solving crimes. 

The wide area imagery system allows for the capability of seeing 32 square miles. 

This, effectively, is a mobile CitiWatch camera. 

What we gain with this is size, so we see a larger area than we would see with a CitiWatch camera, but what we lose is the clarity that we get from a CitiWatch camera, which is on the ground.”

He credited the program with helping solve a crime involving a pair of elderly siblings being shot in Walbrook Junction in February.

The CitiWatch program is a voluntary registry that contains the location and owner information of privately owned surveillance systems—information that is valuable to the Baltimore Police Department in the event of a crime. 

There are 700 such cameras throughout the city.